MULTAN, May 18: Despite the directives of the chief minister and recommendations of the Provincial Selection Board, the education department is reluctant to promote 296 assistant professors as associate professors and teachers fear that delay in the process beyond May 31 will deprive them of annual increment and other service benefits.

In its meeting on March 27, the board had approved the promotion of 296 BS-18 assistant professors on seniority list No 575 to 871 as associate professors in BS-19. On April 22, Chief Minister Dost Muhammad Khosa also approved these promotions.

Sources told Dawn that due to the non-availability of posts to adjust the promoted teachers, former education secretary Qazi Aafaq, in his minutes, recommended upgrading all the posts of incumbent assistant professors to associate professors. Thus, all promoted teachers were to be absorbed against these newly-created posts, they added.

However, according to sources, Aafaq’s successor and current education secretary Arifa Subohi wrote down her own minutes in which she turned down the up-gradation of the posts suggestion floated by her predecessor.

Sources maintained that usually successors do not disagree with the minutes registered by their predecessors and instead own their minutes but it was a unique case in which Ms Subohi insisted writing down her own minutes.

Professors and Lecturers Association Multan chapter’s president Syed Tanveer Ahmed Shah said that a delegation of the association had called on the chief minister on Sunday and solicited his intervention in the implementation of his own directives.

He said that the chiefminister gave them a patient hearing and invited them to see him again on May 21 in Lahore.

He said that if the notification of promotions could not be issued before May 31, all the promoted employees would remain deprived of annual increments in their salaries because, according to Service Rules, an employee must have spent six month in a grade to become entitled to increment corresponding to his pay-scale.

He said that if the notification could not be issued by May 31, this would cause a huge financial as well as service loss to the incumbents, who have fallen victim to bureaucratic bottlenecks.

Talking to Dawn, Ms Subohi said that work on the implementation of promotions was in progress and a summary in this connection would be sent to the chief minister very soon.

She said she was aware of the fact that if the notification could not be issued before June 1, all the promoted employees would lose their annual increments.

She said that former secretary had sent proposals regarding adjusting a few employees against newly-created posts and that, too, on conditional basis and the chief minister had returned the same to her for an appraisal afresh.

She said that annual confidential reports of many employees were not ready which was a major reason behind the delay.